Improvement of passive THz camera images

Marcin Kowalski; Marek Piszczek; Norbert Palka; Mieczyslaw Szustakowski

doi:10.1117/12.971434

26 October 2012 Improvement of passive THz camera images

Marcin Kowalski, Marek Piszczek, Norbert Palka, Mieczyslaw Szustakowski

Proceedings Volume 8544, Millimetre Wave and Terahertz Sensors and Technology V; 85440N (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.971434
Event: SPIE Security + Defence, 2012, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Abstract

Terahertz technology is one of emerging technologies that has a potential to change our life. There are a lot of attractive applications in fields like security, astronomy, biology and medicine. Until recent years, terahertz (THz) waves were an undiscovered, or most importantly, an unexploited area of electromagnetic spectrum. The reasons of this fact were difficulties in generation and detection of THz waves. Recent advances in hardware technology have started to open up the field to new applications such as THz imaging. The THz waves can penetrate through various materials. However, automated processing of THz images can be challenging. The THz frequency band is specially suited for clothes penetration because this radiation does not point any harmful ionizing effects thus it is safe for human beings. Strong technology development in this band have sparked with few interesting devices. Even if the development of THz cameras is an emerging topic, commercially available passive cameras still offer images of poor quality mainly because of its low resolution and low detectors sensitivity. Therefore, THz image processing is very challenging and urgent topic. Digital THz image processing is a really promising and cost-effective way for demanding security and defense applications. In the article we demonstrate the results of image quality enhancement and image fusion of images captured by a commercially available passive THz camera by means of various combined methods. Our research is focused on dangerous objects detection - guns, knives and bombs hidden under some popular types of clothing.

Citation Download Citation

Marcin Kowalski, Marek Piszczek, Norbert Palka, and Mieczyslaw Szustakowski "Improvement of passive THz camera images", Proc. SPIE 8544, Millimetre Wave and Terahertz Sensors and Technology V, 85440N (26 October 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.971434

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